Estates Gazette closes community

Over the past three or four years, I have mentioned Estates Gazette‘s online community, Talking Property, a few times, usually comparing its membership numbers with those of rival Property Week‘s Ning-based network (post) and other real-estate communities. When I last made that comparison in February, the latter had 5,603 members, while EG’s had yet to reach 500.

It seems EG has finally recognised that its community has been drifting and that other EG social media initiatives are more popular. I have just received an email telling me the community site will be closing shortly (14 August 2012), and suggesting I follow EG via its blogs, Twitter feeds, LinkedIn Group and YouTube channel instead.

I had a last look around this morning. It had 528 members (the rival Property Network, meanwhile, now has just over 5700), but few of the features had seen any recent interaction – “Recently updated groups,” for example, was actually updated on 25 March – and several of the people I had listed as ‘friends’ hadn’t used the site since 2010.